Submitted to the government on June 23, it was not made public until Monday, July 4 in the evening.
In this new opinion, the scientific council expresses its point of view on the 7th epidemic wave in France, on the health bill, and it projects itself towards the future.
"We must expect new epidemic waves" and new variants, he warns in particular.
Here's what to remember.
Three “points of vigilance”
110,000 cases per day, 1,000 daily hospital admissions of Covid patients… The 7th epidemic wave, carried by the new Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 variants since the beginning of June, affects all age groups and all regions.
"It is difficult to know what the impact will be in terms of hospitalizations and deaths" as the parameters to be taken into account are numerous, cautiously advances the scientific council.
This one lists “three points of vigilance” which attract his attention:
The fact that the number of Covid patients in hospital has gone down from just 14,400, while it was down to 7,000 by mid-June 2021.
The situation in the West Indies, and in particular in Martinique, still half as vaccinated as mainland France (“the question arises of maintaining a legal system in order to be able to carry out new restrictive measures there if they are necessary”).
The fact that the number of daily deaths in Portugal, hit first by a BA.5 wave, almost reached the peak of the previous wave in January.
Four recommendations
In order to limit the scale and impact of this 7th wave, the scientific council lists four “important messages”:
Respect for barrier gestures in order to protect fragile people.
Insist on the campaign of second booster doses of vaccine (the rate has increased sharply in the meantime, with now 60,000 vaccinations per day on average).
Facilitate access to antiviral drugs, in particular Paxlovid and the monoclonal antibodies which are still effective against BA.4/5, in order "to avoid too great an impact in conventional hospitalization given the summer period and the context of a fragile hospital.
Have hospital indicators updated regularly (this has not been the case on weekends for several weeks, decided Public Health France).
More or less rosy future
Last January, Olivier Véran estimated that it would be “perhaps the last variant, perhaps the last wave”.
Such a statement surprised many experts.
The Scientific Council's message is clear: "Whether it concerns the continued optimization of Omicron by successive mutations giving rise to sub-variants that are increasingly better adapted to humans, or the occurrence of 'a worrying new variant via the already known emergence processes (chronic SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised people, recombination, or retro-zoonosis), new epidemic waves of Covid-19 are to be expected' .
Read also7th wave of Covid-19: 110,000 cases per day… but “it is very difficult” to anticipate the peak
But the situation has changed a lot.
Thanks to "the constitution of an increasingly strong immunity against serious forms thanks to booster shots and past infections", we can hope that the impact of future waves will be much less strong.
At this stage, "it is desirable to keep systems allowing effective monitoring of the circulation of the virus and the securing of the places most at risk for the most fragile, while pursuing a dynamic vaccination policy which remains the most effective weapon. to protect against serious forms of the infection”, writes the “CS”.
Government bill approved
July 31 will mark the end of the health crisis exit management regime.
To succeed him, the government is relying on a simple “monitoring and health security device”.
The bill was posted online Monday evening.
This provides for the maintenance of the SI-DEP and Contact Covid databases, for screening and “tracing”, as well as the possibility of imposing a health pass at the borders, until March 31, 2023. The scientific council “ considers these provisions proportionate to the possible evolutions of the epidemic during the period considered”.
No new “committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks”
The government initially intended to replace the "CS" with a "Committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks".
The Scientific Council "will end its activities on July 31, 2022" and it "insists on the importance of the multidisciplinarity which must remain within this new committee for monitoring and anticipating health risks, and on the necessary dialogue between both committees during the summer of 2022,” its notice reads.
Except that this article does not appear in the bill finally presented to the Council of Ministers, following a negative opinion from the Council of State.
The latter pointed to the absence of "prior assessment of the impact of this creation on the organization of health expertise".
